Date night

The Good: Arriving early and watching both teams during batting practice. We sat in an area of right field called The Porch which is prime home run target area for left handed hitters. One of the balls was hit by Brian Giles and was actually a ground ball down the line, but a Padres pitcher retrieved it and tossed it up. Then about 5 minutes later Adrian Gonzales launched one that hit the empty seat behind us and bounced into Sports Boy’s hands. Nice! It was a blazing hot day and the game started at 4pm so after the Padres hitters were done we went up to our seats which still gave us a great view of everything, but were blissfully in the shade. The Opening Day ceremonies were full of pomp as always. It’s the 40th anniversary of the team so they trotted out stars from each decade to throw out the first pitch and had a huge marching band form the number 40 in the outfield. Meanwhile it was so ODD to see not one sign of #51 anywhere. Trevor Hoffman was THE current Mr Padre and not seeing his image or any highlights of him was so bizarre. I cannot wait until he retires so we can claim him as ours again.

The Bad: Well, the team that lost 99 games last year is off to a similar start 😦 For the second opener in a row, they lost. Now, I will point out that since the team moved to Petco Park, they had won the first 3 openers – and the opponent was the Giants. Last year the Rockies took them down and this year it was the hated Dodgers.  So I recommend making sure the Giants are our opponents next year. Also, I *really* didn’t lile sharing the day with Dodger fans. I mean – ICK! There were too damn many of them. Not as many as I’ve seen in the past, but still..too many. We had four sitting right next to us and they had the audacity to boo all our 40th anniversary ceremony highlights and honorees. C’mon now! You come to out stadium and boo our history? Wrong wrong wrong. And also evidence as to why I normally refuse to attend Dodger games.

The Ugly: So we were sitting in the really nice section with in seat food service. And since we were in middle of the aisle seats making it kind of a pain to get up to go anywhere, I didn’t mind using the service. We ordered in the 4th inning. And waited. And waited. The people next to us who also ordered at the same time got up to chase down the server. Which resulted in them getting their food but ours was still missing. Finally in the middle of the 8th inning the guy comes back and asks “What did you order again?” UGH! Never mind!! At that point though we were hungry we also knew we could get out and get food somewhere else faster!!  They guy was nice as could be and very apologetic and gave us skittles and water but man..what a mess! Clearly the in seat service crew was NOT prepared for the sold out opener which is kinda stupid since EVERY opening night is like that! But hey, it gave us something to focus on while the team was losing 🙂